Wednesday, December 23, 2015

When will the EU lift the taboo on the Australian solution for the refugee and migrant crisis?

So far, the EU’s response to
the refugee and migration crisis, which witnessed 1.2 million illegal crossings into the EU
this year, has failed. Seven
EU Summits were held this year but unlike with the “Seven
Summits” mountaineering
challenge, not much glory was achieved with it.

One measure EU member states
agreed was an EU scheme to “relocate”
160,000 refugees who have already arrived in
the passport-free Schengen-zone. So far however, they only managed to relocate
200 people, on
top of a few 1000 resettlements from refugee
camps outside of the EU. The fact that it’s obviously not possible to stop
people from moving within the Schengen area didn’t stop the EU Commission from
putting a lot of energy in the scheme, in the process even damaging the EU’s image in central-
and Eastern European countries which were being outvoted on the issue. It seems
impossible to explain the simple fact that in a passport-free zone means one
can’t keep people in one country to either German Chancellor Angela Merkel,
obsessed by the desire to relocate a number of refugees some say she has
invited, or the EU Commission, obsessed by using any crisis to grab more powers
even if it means tarnishing the EU’s reputation.

A second measure was the
creation of so-called “hotspots”,EU-run reception centres in Italy and Greece, where migrants and refugees would be identified
and fingerprinted. So far, only two are functioning and the experience can’t be called successful: apart from the fact that
they’re overcrowded, they also seem unable to make sure all arriving refugees
actually register there.

Now the EU’s focus has shifted to createa new EU border and coast guard force, basically replacing current EU border agency Frontex. The EU Commission
even dared to propose that the force would be allowed to operate on the
territory of a member state which doesn’t want this, although this “invasion
clause” is facing a lot of opposition from certain member states, with Polish Foreign Minister Witold
Waszczykowski complaining: “There would be an undemocratic
structure reporting to no one knows who.”

More
border guards in itself won’t prevent people from being able to just continue
their journey once they have made it to a Greek island, for example Lesbos. When one rewards refugees who risk their lives by
allowing them to just continue travel and not await their asylum application,
it’s only logical that ever more people are going to try to make the dangerous
journey. There are reports that Greece has transported refugees from the Greek
islands to the mainland. Also, the efforts of the Italian Navy and multilateral
Operation Tritonto save people from drowning in the waters between
Libya and Italy should be lauded, but the fact that these people are being
transferred to the Italian mainland gives them an incentive to make the risky
journey. This year, the UN reckons 706 people have died trying to reach Greece, 2,889 people trying to
reach Italy and 100 trying to reach Spain.

There is an alternative. Unlike the EU, Australia has created a safe shelter outside of its territory to divert
those attempting to make it to Australia illegally. Therefore, the country has closed a
deal with Papua New Guinea and Nauru. The EU has no such deal with any third
country. It can only choose between pushing back migrants and refugees to
unsafe countries (or countries unwilling to take them back, like Turkey) or rewarding them for taking huge
risks by bringing them to the EU’s mainland, which unintentionally becomes a
ferry service for human smugglers.

Since Australia’s
policywasimplemented,
there has been criticism of
the conditions in the refugee camps, where also
several people have died in isolated instances, but only a limited number of
boats were caught trying to make the journey to Australia. Importantly, only
one singledeath has been reported while no
asylum-seeker boats have managed to arrive. Meanwhile,
in the EU, 3,695
people have been dying this year, which means
more than 70 every week, and that’s only those on record. That’s not
including the 23,000 people which would have lost their lives in the
last 15 years while attempting to reach Europe before this crisis.

Even if it may have been
easier for Australia to do this, one shouldn’t forget that the country also
witnessed disasters with hundreds dying at sea
before implementing its successful policy. If only the EU would manage to half
the number of people dying at sea, that would already be a massive step
forward.

One would therefore expect the
EU to consider this approach, preferably without repeating Australia’s mistake
of providing bad conditions in its off-shore refugee shelters. Instead, Australia’s
is solution has been quickly brushed off the table by the EU Commission, claiming
that it wouldn’t be in line with the international legal principle of
non-refoulement", which forbids forced return. That’s a questionable
claim, given that people would be sent to an off-shore refugee shelter actually
owned by EU states where they would retain fully the right to apply for asylum,
unlike what’s the case currently in the EU’s “hotspots”, where respect for
asylum seekers' rights is doubtful.

The EU could just perfectly
copy the good aspects of Australia’s solution (create an offshore refugee
shelter) while avoiding the bad aspects (bad conditions in refugee shelters).
Germany’s own refugee shelters aren’t exactly a shining
example of good governance, so it would be even better to try to set up not
just an offshore refugee shelter for refugees but a proper city for refugees,
governed by officials from countries with a high degree of rule of law. This solution, which I have dubbed “free havens”,
has alsobeen made by US business
man Jason Buzi, who wants
to give refugees their own “Refugee Nation”, by prominent US academics Anne-Marie Slaughter and PaulRomer and by Egyptian businessman
Naguib Sawiris, the 10th richest man in Africa, who has offered to buy an island off
Italy or Greece in order to rehouse hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing
Syria and other conflicts.

Obviously a major challenge
would be to find a proper location, either within EU territory or outside of
it. If an Egyptian businessman manages to identify a number of – naturally
empty – islands, it may be feasible within the EU’s borders. Alternatively, one
of the world’s many uninhabited places would be an
option. It may cost a lot, but so does the current approach, which may ultimately cost Germany alone up to
900 billion euro according to some of the wilder estimates.

Even
this wouldn’t solve everything, given that at the beginning of this year, according
to EU border agency Frontex, “most of thosewho currently reside in the
EU illegally, originally entered in possession of valid travel documents and a
visa whose validity period they have since overstayed”. That’s also one reason why it wouldn’t make sense to abolish Schengen,
which brings great personal and economic benefits of passport-free travel for
citizens and companies. Neither should Schengen be the main reason for European
countries to cooperate on border control. Refugees make it into Schengen while
entering Greece, and then immediately leave the passport-free zone again when
crossing the Balkans. The reason why European countries must cooperate here is
due to the simple fact they share a natural sea border: the Mediterranean. Even
if Greece and Italy would be kicked out of Schengen, it would make sense to
help them guard Europe’s natural sea border.

Former Australian PM Tony
Abbott has summarized
it as follows: "If you want to keep life safe, you've got to keep the
boats stopped." He has the facts on his side and slowly even the EU is
somehow stumbling towards this solution. Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo boasted after last week’s Summit that
she had convinced the other EU leaders that “the solutions lie beyond, not
within the EU’s borders.” After the failing attempt to relocate people within a
passport-free zone we’ll probably now just have to wait for the EU to figure
out that rewarding people who manage to cross the border with the right to
continue their journey will undo all efforts to increase the number of border
patrols. Whatever one thinks of the Australian solution: it
deserves to be considered due to its success in terms of almost completely
avoiding people dying at sea, certainly in the face of the tragic failure of
the EU in this regard.